Fritzie Kozka

Fritzie Kozka is Pete Kozka’s wife, a friendly and well-liked member of the Argus community who helps raise the couple’s purebred chow dogs. Her clearest role in the story emerges through the escalating rivalry between Pete and Fidelis: when Hottentot’s scavenging leaves a foul display at the Kozka shop, Fritzie moves to solve the practical problem, but the response ultimately helps set a retaliatory chain in motion that damages the Waldvogel household and hardens Eva’s view of the Kozkas.

Identity and Household

Fritzie and Pete raise purebred chows, coal-black-tongued dogs known for their bitter temperaments. Their champion Hottentot is the progenitor of their line. He mates with Nancy and with Zig, whose name shortens Ziguenerin; Zig sleeps near Fritzie’s piano and can be prompted to howl musically when a child sings nursery rhymes in a minor key. The household portrait places Fritzie amid both the dogs’ breeding and the family’s musical life.

The Kozkas are popular in town despite charging for their soup bones and refusing credit. That friendly standing matters to the conflict: Hottentot is dangerous enough to bite people, but his owners’ good reputation has kept him from being poisoned, as other offensive dogs in Argus sometimes are.

Hottentot and the Butchers’ Rivalry

Fidelis and Pete disagree about what dogs’ loyalty means. Fidelis doubts that canine devotion comes from the heart, seeing it as appetite-driven; Pete believes dogs, especially his own, offer personal and exceptional fealty. Their disagreement becomes more than an argument when Hottentot begins visiting the back of Fidelis’s shop for scraps. The men also differ over butchery waste: Pete saves even small offcuts and sells them to a guts dealer, while Fidelis distributes scraps to dogs, itinerants, and poor residents. Hottentot’s visits make that difference visible in the form of a dog repeatedly drawn to another butcher’s provisions.

After Hottentot carries home a set of ripe bones and gnaws them near the Kozka shop entrance, the odor spreads through town. Pete tries to take the prize away, but the dog growls; Pete grabs his ears and warns him that he will become a skin on the wall. Fritzie, standing in the doorway with her arms folded, interrupts the quarrel with a practical instruction: “Save that thing,” she says, adding that she has an idea what to do with the bones and telling Pete to tie up the dog.

The restraint does not hold. Hottentot chews through a clothesline rope and returns to Fidelis for food; later he comes home with hooves tied together with sinew. Pete chains him, but the dog winds the chain until its links pop. When Pete finds him again on the front stoop, slavering over a boar’s skull, he reaches for the skull and suffers a severe bite. Doctor Heech closes the wound with ten stitches and advises Pete to shoot Hottentot. Pete refuses to blame the dog, instead believing that Fidelis has corrupted his loyalty.

The Bone Prank and Its Consequences

The bones become a public embarrassment as well as a nuisance: the mess at the Kozka shop’s entrance turns potential customers away and makes the family an object of town laughter. Fritzie responds decisively, marching Pete to the greening pile, stuffing the bones into a gunnysack, and telling him what to do with them. Her intervention is aimed at getting the bones out of sight, but Pete carries out the plan in a way that transforms the dispute into revenge.

Pete drives to Waldvogel’s Meats intending to leave the bones on the stoop. Finding the shop closed and deserted, he assumes Fidelis can afford a vacation because his business is thriving. Envy and a sense of betrayal overcome his original plan. He enters the house, tears down the immaculate white eiderdown and embroidered sheets from Fidelis and Eva’s bedroom, and hides the decaying bones underneath. Their foulness seeps into the mattress and bedding.

The episode’s lasting consequence falls particularly on Eva. She responds by setting the locks each night and buying interior bolts, and she vows that she would drive the Kozkas out of business or make their lives unhappy if she could. The odor persists despite her attempts to remove it with bleach, lye soap, vinegar, sunlight, lavender, orange essence, and lemon juice. Fritzie’s brief practical intervention thus belongs to a conflict that reaches beyond commercial rivalry: the bones carry the stink of the butcher’s trade into the ordered domestic space Eva has carefully kept separate from the shop.